The Fenmere Job by Marshall Ryan Maresca – Review

Published: February 25, 2020

Publisher: DAW Books

Series: The Streets of Maradaine #3

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 368 (Mass Market)

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

Mixing urban and high fantasy, the third Streets of Maradaine novel follows the crew of outlaws led by the Rynax brothers as they struggle to save Holver Alley from a new threat.

An uneasy calm has filled the neighborhood of North Seleth, as the survivors of the Holver Alley fire return to normal, honest lives. But Asti and Verci Rynax and the rest of the Holver Alley Crew know the peace won’t last. Josie Holt, once an ally to the Rynaxes, is now working her own agenda with the mage circle that has moved into the neighborhood.

Asti learns that Josie plans to smuggle the drug efhân through North Seleth, which can only mean she is in league with the Fenmere cartel. The Rynax brothers want to wait for the right moment to strike at Josie, but they and the rest of the crew agree that they have to stop the efhân shipment, keep the drugs out of their neighborhood, and stop Fenmere from getting a toehold on the neighborhood.

One more problem: The Thorn. The vigilante from Fenmere’s part of town has come to North Seleth, looking to burn Fenmere’s whole empire down to ashes. When the Thorn’s strike collides with the crew’s operation, the delicate peace in the neighborhood crumbles, and an all-out war between mages, gangs, thieves, and the Thorn might fill the streets of Maradaine.

---

Maresca has once again managed to wow me with his adventure stories and my love for the world of Maradaine continues to grow. This is another one of his crossover stories and this time (as the synopsis states) it’s the Holver Alley crew and the infamous Thorn of Dentonhill. Except the Thorn is getting around lately, so maybe I’ll just stick to “the Thorn” and leave off the location part of his moniker. As expected, this was a tense, action packed story that left me wanting more in a good way!

The Holver Alley crew have been keeping their heads down since the events of the previous book, but when a new, more powerful drug shows up on their streets the gang is back in action. More than anything, they want to protect their area of town and find out once and for all who torched their homes and caused the deaths of so many innocents. With the introduction of new drugs, readers will expect no one less than William Fenmere to be involved. On top of that, it seems there could be foreign involvement and then the Thorn comes along and unintentional botches things a bit. This leads to perhaps one of my favorite team ups yet – the Thorn (aka Veranix Calbert, University student) makes a wonderful counterpart to the much rougher Holver Alley crew. The Rynax brothers, while trying to walk the straight and narrow path, are quite frankly terrible at it. Those two either attract trouble or dive into it head first. 

This was a heck of a story and one that I devoured quickly. With the crossovers and ever expanding world of Maradaine, there are countless intricacies that readers will pick up on and that is one of the things that makes me love this whole big mess. If you’re suffering from Cosmere withdrawals (*Sanderson Fans*), this might satisfy your desire for complex, interconnected stories but on a somewhat smaller scale. This isn’t a universe – it’s a rich, well-developed city that hints at further expansion to a more detailed world in the future. I wait with great anticipation for the next book to be released!

And did I mention that the food descriptions are at times mouthwatering? I’m going to have to pull a couple of the best ones to make for a Fantasy Feast post in the future!